Falmouth motorcycle racer Shaw-O’Leary awaits big break

When you know what it is to go 300 kilometres per hour on a motorcycle it’s hard to go slow. But patience, along with big hopes and dreams, power Falmouth racer Austin Shaw-O’Leary.

Shaw-O’Leary, along with younger brother Jacob, are a rarity. They are Maritime motorcycle racers trying to run the full, four-event national racing season this year. The 18-year-old Austin, graduating from high school this year, competes on bigger motorcycles and will ride in the pro 600 sport bike series, second only to the national superbike class.

A hand injury suffered in a fall during practice prior to the first round of the season earlier this month in Shannonville, Ont., kept Austin out of competition. He expects to be ready in time for the second round, in St-Eustache, Que., from July 4-6.

The family gets one home race with the Mopar Canadian Superbike Championship series setting up at Atlantic Motorsport Park from July 25-27.

Jacob, 14, is in a small, but competitive class, of Honda 250 riders, moving up from 125 cc motorcycles last season. He was first and second in two races to begin the year and is excited to be in the championship chase for the development division.

Jacob has time to be patient, and appears to be perfectly content, but Austin sees his life flashing before his eyes.

He had a one-time opportunity to race in a big-time feeder series in Valencia, Spain late in 2012, an experience that left him hungering for the biggest circuits in the world, where racers earn millions and have the best of equipment and staff.

But hauling around eastern Canada just to compete, helped by two part-time jobs and the support of his parents, is what he has right now.

“I’ve got a really strong bike this year that I haven’t had that over the past few years,” says Austin, determined to make the best of it. “We’re really hoping to get the bikes set up to where they need to be so I can go out and start contending for Canadian national wins.”

The issue — an old refrain in Maritime racing — is sponsorship. They get some help from Dartmouth’s Pro Cycle that defrays some costs, but the family is out of pocket for everything else.

Their family turns into a motorcycle racing caravan on race weekends. Father Jeff, who still rides some, takes care of the motorcycles and mother, Suzanne, keeps the family fed and pitches in with the bikes as well.

Austin does his best to share in the travel costs to keep racing from being too much of a hardship on the family.

“Hopefully, we can start to open the eyes of some sponsors and then maybe next year I could sign on with a team down in the U.S., bring some money each weekend and then I could race with them and further my career from there.”

He has a manager in California looking to find him an opportunity there.

Now in his fourth year on the Canadian circuit, Austin rode in the superbike and sportbike classes last year. This year he’ll register for both to maximize his practice time, but will only ride in the sport bike class.

He was fourth overall in sportbike last year and 10th in superbike, leaving little doubt about his talents.

“We have to go away three times,” he says. “All the other guys, where they live, their longest drive might be five hours.

“You hear all the guys complaining that they have to drive all the way down to Shubie (AMP) and use all that gas. But we do it every weekend to go to their tracks.”

He says the family has hustled to land some sponsorships, but it’s been one disappointment after another. He said it’s been his experience that the country stops at Quebec when it comes to corporate marketing and promotion.

He says one executive who had handed him a trophy during his first season on the tour didn’t recognize his name when he came looking for assistance.

“So we decided to try somewhere else and it seems like everywhere we’ve been trying we’ve been getting doors shut in our face.”

Spain showed him how good it can be.

He rode a practice lap and needed a shifter adjustment. Even though the mechanical work was only going to take a minute or two, a crew member rushed in with paper towel to clean his bike before he returned to the track.

The reality now is all the entire family pitches in. His uncle makes his decals and his grandfather does some body work and painting. “It’s a full family affair and a lot of effort goes into it. But to have that support from my family is a big deal.”

He sees it all as character building. He’s had to learn everything there is about maintaining motorcycles out of necessity.

Whatever he earns goes into the race enterprise. If he runs out of money and his parents have to pay for tires or equipment, he pays them back with what he makes in the off-season. “I pay for all my racing and that makes me proud.”

Despite the obstacles, he refuses to be discouraged.

“It’s that feeling you get when you are going down the backstraight and you just hit 301 kilometres per hour,” he says.

“You come up out of the bubble, you get on the brakes, you feel that rush of air pull you back and it’s all you can do to hold on to the bars. Then you tip it in the corner, get hard back on the throttle and you make that pass for the win, that’s the feeling I’m so addicted to. It’s a feeling of success.”